Flowers For Socrates

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD

The long days of summer are a pleasant memory. Now the warm days grow fewer, and the Autumn nights are longer, with winter-chill in the wee hours.

It’s the darkling time of year, when we want to light a fire in the grate, and heat some cider. A time for telling stories by the flame’s flickering light, with the shadows leaning close over our shoulders, as if to listen.
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BEYOND THE RED RIVER

by Thomas McGrath

The birds have flown their summer skies to the south,
And the flower-money is drying in the banks of bent grass
Which the bumble bee has abandoned. We wait for a winter lion,
Body of ice-crystals and sombrero of dead leaves.
 
A month ago, from the salt engines of the sea,
A machinery of early storms rolled toward the holiday houses
Where summer still dozed in the pool-side chairs, sipping
An aging whiskey of distances and departures.
 
Now the long freight of autumn goes smoking out of the land.
My possibles are all packed up, but still I do not leave.
I am happy enough here, where Dakota drifts wild in the universe,
Where the prairie is starting to shake in the surf of the winter dark.

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